AVIATION: Jets for Eastern

Eastern Air Lines’ Captain Eddie Rickenbacker last week plotted the course that will take his airline into the jet age with a rush. In Manhattan Chairman Rickenbacker announced a $350 million, five-year plan for three new fleets of airliners —piston, turboprop and pure jet—to be paid for out of Eastern’s future earnings and put into service in three giant steps.

It was the biggest single airline expansion program in history, and Captain Eddie had laid out his timetables with the precision of a flight around the world.

The new planes and their timetable: ¶ $125 million fleet of 40 piston-engined Douglas DC-7Bs, plus another ten Lockheed Super Constellations to give Eastern 370-m.p.h. cruising speeds along all its mainline routes. Eastern has already ordered 20 of the planes and received eight; the remaining 42 will be delivered by mid-1958.

¶ $100 million, 40-plane fleet of 415-m.p.h. Lockheed Electra turboprops similar to those recently ordered by American Airlines. Captain Eddie sat down with Lockheed President Robert Gross and signed an order for 40 Electras with an option on 30 more, each one to carry 66 passengers first-class, up to 91 air coach.

The first planes will be delivered in August 1958, and the entire fleet will be in service by July 1959. If Eastern exercises its option, the remaining 30 planes will be in service by November 1960.

¶ $120 million, 2O-plane fleet of four-engined jet liners, which will cruise at 550-600 m.p.h. with 100 passengers, cut the New York-to-Miami flight time to a bare two hours. Rickenbacker has not yet decided on what plane to buy, but it will be either the Boeing 707 or Douglas’ new DC-8. Scheduled to start in service by 1960, the entire fleet of 20 will be flying by 1961.

By then, says Rickenbacker, he will have a fleet of 218 multiengined airliners—60 jet and turboprop “express liners,” 60 local-service twin-engined ships, plus 98 four-engined “super air-coach” planes. All told, the fleet will treble Eastern’s current carrying capacity to 20 million passengers annually flying 15 billion miles. Says Rickenbacker: “Air transportation should make more progress in the next ten years than we have been able to accomplish in the past 25.”